Exercise 14: An Organised Event

It has been a while since I last posted, due to a number of reasons. One of which being a very busy period sorting things out for my photography business, but also because I've been looking for a possible event I could photograph for this. However weather, and the time of year have been against me, so I've decided I will do the write up about the folk festival I shot for the last two projects which I did also photograph with this project in mind.

I have shown a fair summary of the folk festival over these two exercises, from the movement, colour and of course the dancing in the first two wide angle shots, along with the slightly quirkier side with the morris dancer waiting outside the fish and chip shop in the third of these. I also feel the shots in the standard view exercise really show some of the individuals at this event. However I will add one more shot to the mix and that is below:

I feel this image shows the popularity of the event a bit more than the others, with the crowds on the far side of the morris dancers, and the way the morris dancers are just dancing anywhere on the streets, with here next to the post office, just on the pavement outside. It's certainly one weekend of unusual activity in Tenterden, and it does attract many people to come and watch.

Exercise 13: A standard view

The next exercise was to use a standard focal length for street images. For this I used my 50mm f/1.8 lens. Despite being my cheapest, I love this lens, as the creative possibilities with the shallow depth of field are endless, and I love being forced to move myself to compose, it makes me look for different images than I would otherwise. I took these photographs at the folk festival in my local town again.

The image above was taken during the parade in the folk festival. I thought this was a fairly quirky portrait, despite being noticed by the subject in the image, I feel it works well as an image, displaying the dress well, and capturing him looking into the onlookers as he walks down the high street.

This is the second image I chose for this exercise. These were street performers at the folk festival, musicians to accompany the dancers. While another photographer was with these people they had stopped playing for a minute while she tried to get them to pose for the shot she wanted. Whilst she was doing this I saw the opportunity where these two musicians were casually moving, but created a great composition in front of me, so I quickly grabbed the moment to show both the drummer and the other musician (not sure what the instrument is called!) together in their unusual dress (even for morris dancers!).

I really like the above image as it captures the dancer in perfect focus in the dance, staring straight ahead, but with an expression that denotes the internal concentration. The dancers in the background mirroring her moves also add to the picture, and give a good sense of the movement of the dance.

I enjoyed using this lens in street photography. I felt it was more me than the wide angle lens, as it gave a very good perspective on what I saw at the event. It also allowed me to identify individuals, but still show some of the scene they were in.

Exercise 12: Up Close and Involved

When I saw this exercise, I knew it would be very challenging to get up close, so I waited for an event where I felt more comfortable to do this sort of photography, using the wide angle lens. Below are a selection of images from the Folk Festival in my local town.

Although above is not strictly "up close" I felt it was a shot I couldn't resist taking. To see one of the morris dancers, in full dress casually leaning against a wall outside of a fish and chip shot. I felt standing back just a bit with my wide angle lens (sigma 12-24, on a full frame, so it is an extremely wide lens). I felt showing this in context with the fish and chip shop was the only way that it would work.

These dancers were dancing right in front of me. I was near the widest to fit the entire scene in. I felt this captured the atmosphere and movement in the dance very well, as I was so close, I almost felt a part of it myself.

Again this is a very wide angle shot. I deliberately took it so you could see the police car in the background as it added a bit of contrast to the image, with the men in bright white, traditional morris dancers, waving their hankies about, while the police stand on and watch.

It was uncomfortable to be so close to the people when taking the photographs, its completely the opposite to the telephoto, as it is impossible to stay unnoticed. I don't think I handled this as well as the telephoto project, but am still reasonably pleased with the images I did capture.

Exercise 11: Standing back

For this exercise I was in my local town of Tenterden. I used my small compact camera to help stay unnoticed, and as this had a powerful telephoto zoom, it was ideal for the job. Below are the four best images I took on the day

I think the four images above display quite a wide variety of actions, at a number of different locations. I found the actually challenge of taking the photos was tough. Despite the distance the telephoto lens gave me from the subject, sometimes it was still difficult to stay unnoticed. However the focal length gave a very good opportunity to isolate the subject from the scene, making it ideal for picking out individuals and small groups, which shows in the images that I finally settled on.

Exercise 10: Moment and gesture

For this exercise my comfortable situation was a round of pitch and putt with a few of my mates (first one I lost in a while as well, must be because of my attention was focussed on the photography and not the golf!). I thought this was the ideal situation to both capture people's emotions (we do get quite competitive) and the sense of timing with the ball being in the right position etc.

The above image I thought was a good capture. It shows the concentration of the player lining up his putt, but also the interest of his fellow competitors in the background. I think this image is succesful due to the position of the various points of interest in the frame.
I liked this shot which was actually taken on the final hole of the course. The player shown was putting for the win, and you can see in his face, him trying to exert his will on the ball to make it go in the hole. I thought this was a great shot that summed up the tension and competitive nature of the moment

Above we have the key moment in the game. Up to this hole (the 6th of 9) there was 1 shot between the four competitors, but above Tom sinks the putt to gain 2 shots on everyone else and the emotion showed. I think the timing and the framing of this shot were successful being able to capture the height of the celebration, but also the disgruntled opponent in the background

This was the final hole and the final shot of our round. The player taking the shot already new he could only finish second, but I thought the shot itself was good timing, with the ball just dropping into the hole, not the only shot I got like this, but certainly the best as each of the competitors is looking at the ball as it drops into the hole.

I enjoyed this exercise, it was a good way to notice the opportunites for interesting shots, practice the timing, and learn to read where there is the potential for emotion, action, and drama to occur, and be ready with the camera to capture the moment as and when it occurs

Exercise 9: A comfortable situation

I thought I would try this exercise at a cricket match I was playing in for my local club. I often photograph the players as they are batting, whilst I myself am waiting to bat, so I thought I would try and capture a bit of the atmosphere too. I got three photographs below that I feel capture some of the atmosphere of the local cricket club.

Above is a picture of our groundsman, he was looking just past me. I was a bit uncomfortable with this photograph as although I was around people that are used to me being with a camera, I was not used to photographing them in close proximity. This I felt led to a bit awkward framing of the shot, and I haven't quite managed to get the groundsman, his pint, and his pipe in quite the right positions for my liking, as I really wanted these to be the focus of the image, and the end result is a little bit messy. However I quite like the personal connection within the photograph as it appears he is looking at the camera, and hence the viewer of the image.

Now having spent a bit more time in the situation, with my camera I was feeling more comfortable, and so were my teammates, allowing me to capture this moment, the classic batsman waiting for his innings, slightly nervous, and trying to relax, hence the cigarette in hand. I also like the way the man padded up is looking out towards the action, obviously taking a keen interest, whereas his teammate is playing with his fingers, looking away from the action, obviously not with so much of a personal involvment yet. I think this is a much better capture, once I had settled into the situation better and relaxed, and my teammates relaxing more helped as well.

This I was even more comfortable taking, being more distance between me and the action, and the photograph being taken would not even be noticed. This is the same batsman as who was padded up just returning to the pavilion after getting out. This is the contrast of emotions in a cricket match, the outgoing batsmen, downbeat after his innings has come to a premature end, and the new batsman, full of nerves and anticipation, yet trying not to show any of it as he heads out towards the pitch. I think my timing is good here, getting the two batsmen as they passed, but my position could have been further to my left, to seperate the batsmen heading to the crease, from the celebrating fielders in the background

Research: David Bailey

Now for me, with the first project being on portraits, there is only one photographer I can look at. There are a number of excellent portrait and fashion photographers, Guy Bourdin (who I researched in a previous course), Annie Leibovitz, Cecil Beaton, Harry Peccinotti, but with having worked in a camera shop, and being a photographer, there is one name I hear all the time: David Bailey. The customer's favourite in the camera shop "I'm no David Bailey or anything", or the conversation on someone discovering I'm a photographer "oh so you fancy yourself as a bit of a David Bailey then?". If there is one man in photography, who could himself be considered a celebrity, it is certainly David Bailey.

David Bailey first took up photography when he was in his national service with the RAF, after the appropiation of his trumpet, he looked for other creative outlets, and bought a Rolliflex camera. Later he was determined to follow a career in photography and also bought a Canon Rangefinder camera, and he became a second assistant to David Ollins. His career took off while he was a photographic assistant at the John French studio when he was contracted as a photographer for Vogue magazine.

David worked himself to become what is probably recognised as the first "Celebrity Photographer" along with Terence Donovan who he worked with. David himself summed up his appeal very well; "The pictures I take are simple and direct and about the person I'm photographing and not about me." This really underlines David's sense of a portrait. He really looks to do more than just take a photograph, he looks to capture the essence of a person, or at least make the viewer of the photograph connect with the person in the photograph in some way. Again Bailey states; I don't care about composition or anything like that. I just want the emotion of the person in the picture to come across.... to get something from that person."

David Bailey as so many portraits to pick from, spanning many different types of person, every one is individual, there is no "photographic style" as such when it comes to Bailey in my opinion at least, there is just a varied assortment of very personal photographs, and I think this is where his appeal stems from. One of his most controversial images is that of the London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray:

This image portrays the Kray brothers exactly how you would imagine them to be; tough and confrontational. Bailey has manged to get the exact expressions to portray this from the two brothers, but also created an odd juxtaposition between the two, to create an unease about the photo.

This is another exquisite image by Bailey, he's taken a famous person (Jack Nicholson), got him into a fun pose, but only that controlled the light extremely well, to really mould the face. This is another key feature in Bailey's photographs. With his photographs of men he usually uses strong directional lighting, to pick up every line about the face, and gets them to pull strong fun poses. With women it is usually softer, less harsh lighting, to really give a soft, beautiful look to the skin. I shall post two more pictures below to emphasise this, the second being a self portrait by Bailey, which is just an excellent image of himself.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bailey_(photographer)

http://www.pdngallery.com/legends/bailey/

Unseen Vogue (edited by Robin Derrick and Robin Mur)